if that's your standard then scientology is a true religion, because it is formed and growing. LDS is obviously true, and so is Islam. In fact all revelations must be true, if they form the basis of a successful religion.
if that’s your standard then scientology is a true religion, because it is formed and growing. LDS is obviously true, and so is Islam. In fact all revelations must be true, if they form the basis of a successful religion.
***You’re putting words in his mouth, straw argumentation. Nowhere did he say it was a “true” religion or that they must be true, just that there’s strong evidence to support that a religion WAS formed, in contrast to your contention that “the evidence doesn’t support the founding of a religion. “
Who said a successful religion had to be true? Being that the doctrines of different religions have at least some contradiction with one another at most one can be entirely true. Further, a reasonable view is to suspect none are entirely true but some are closer to others. Sort of like a good scientific theory. A theory is accepted when it appears closer to the truth then all that went before. But the wisdom of science still works hard to try to falsify the theory in the hopes of getting even closer to the truth. Just as a wise theologian tries to get closer to the truth about God and anyone that thinks they know everything about Him is just silly (and yes I acknowledge there are theologies outside of monotheism. I simply don't take them seriously).
Still on occasion, a step backwards occurs. Something gets accepted at least partially on irrational and unsupportable grounds. There are many examples of this in religion. There are many examples of this in science. I will grant that by nature crappy theology is harder to get rid of then crappy science, but the basic pattern is quite similar.
But why mention specific religions that were obviously steps backwards? Or if you contend that it is not obvious they were steps backwards why did you mention them specifically?